


Green Tea Will Change Your Life

by badboy_fangirl



Series: The Green Tea Universe [1]
Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 04:01:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7251163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Season 2 AU. Jane and LJ meet up with Lincoln, Michael, and Sara in Panama, and then Lincoln's son plays matchmaker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a fic exchange. My prompts were green tea, reminiscing and hobbies. The hobbies portion didn't really work into it much, but the other two prompts helped to create this. Additionally, I had the help of the **World's Most Awesome Beta** , Amanda. It would not be nearly so detailed and thematic without her help.

_Do you know what the definition of a hero is?  
Someone who gets other people killed.  
~Joss Whedon_

Jane Phillips’ 27th birthday fell on a Tuesday, which happened to be the same day she was summoned to a secret meeting regarding The Company. She had been working for The Company for almost six years at the time, and had been coming to the slow realization that it wasn’t what she signed on for. When she’d made the rendezvous point, she wasn’t all that surprised to be introduced to Aldo Burrows. He was infamous, and the entire brigade of agents had been told to kill him should they ever come across him. “Shoot him in the head,” they’d been instructed. “Don’t listen to a word he says, he’s rogue and he must be brought down.” 

When Jane listened instead of killing him, she had already crossed over. 

 

 

Lincoln Burrows’ 33rd birthday had fallen on a Thursday. It hadn’t been a particularly special day, except that he and Michael had gone to lunch. He’d been working at the docks for more than a year, made his child support payments steadily, and actually saw warmth when he looked into his little brother’s eyes. It had been a good day, really, when he measured it against other days—even other birthdays. 

The next year he didn’t see Michael on his birthday. He got loaded and passed out in an acquaintance’s shitty apartment, missing the call from his brother. Later when he listened to the message, Michael had said the right words of happy wishes, but his voice held a disgust that made it impossible for Lincoln to call him back. 

 

 

Michael Scofield’s 32nd birthday had been one month to the day after his brother had been sentenced to death, and happened to be a rainy Saturday in Chicago. He doesn’t remember celebrating it, though if he thinks about it long enough, he remembers that Veronica Donovan called him and wished him a happy birthday. He had been sketching blue prints, hoping the repetitive drawing would help him remember the quickest routes from one end of Fox River Penitentiary to the other. 

Another idea had occurred to him after he hung up with Veronica. She’d said she was sorry she hadn’t bought him a tacky card he could save forever. That was when he started tacking things to the wall. 

 

 

Sara Tancredi’s 29th birthday arrived on a bleak Monday morning when all she had to look forward to was a visit from a good looking inmate who would need an insulin shot. He gave her a paper flower and a reason to smile, even though birthdays meant nothing to her. Later, when she found out he had lied, and didn’t need insulin, she would shake her head and tell him how foolish he had been to take chances like that with his health. 

He would just smile as he leaned towards her and tell her it had all worked out for the best right before he brushed a kiss across her lips. 

 

 

LJ Burrows’ 17th birthday came on a Wednesday. A phone call from his father also came that day and the words, “We’ll meet up with you and Jane in Panama,” might as well have been a chocolate cake, ice cream and a stack of presents, because it made him happier than anything he’d ever received in his life. 

He’d hung up the cell phone and turned to Jane, who sat next to him on a bed in a hotel room in San Diego, California. “You ever been to Panama?” he asked her. 

“I actually have,” she said, a smile creeping across her face. “We better go buy some shorts and swim wear.” 

 

 

“I don’t have to stay here. I’ll just go get a hotel room and then buzz outta here,” Jane said when Lincoln, Michael and Sara arrived four days after she and LJ to the house in Panama that Michael had arranged for them six months previously. Her eyes darted back and forth between Lincoln and LJ and Lincoln wondered if he was making her nervous. 

He didn’t like the sound of her leaving, and so as casually as possible he offered, “LJ and I can share a room. You can have the third bedroom. Michael and Sara will be sharing anyway,” he muttered quietly under his breath as the people he spoke of walked down the hall away from them, holding hands, to check out the digs. 

“Jane, you can’t leave,” LJ said, moving to stand next to his father. His hand touched Lincoln’s back, for about the eighth time in as many minutes. Lincoln couldn’t remember a time when LJ wanted him so much, except maybe when he was a baby, but that was different. He didn’t know any better then. “I don’t want you to leave. And neither does Dad. Right, Dad?” 

Jane’s eyes moved from LJ’s earnest face to Lincoln’s, wariness in her expression. Lincoln felt like a little child who had just been instructed to say he was sorry even though he really wasn’t. He didn’t want her to leave, that was true, but he wasn’t exactly sure _why_ he didn’t want her to leave.

Hunger in many of its forms rumbled through him when he looked at her. Hunger for information about his father that only she had, hunger for the protection she offered his son with her easy handling of a gun, hunger for a woman who looked so different than Veronica yet somehow made his body respond in just the same way. There were too many things mixed up together for him to know which was the more motivating factor and until he could figure it out, he didn’t want to say something that might somehow be untrue. Or only partly true. Or maybe the truth scared him most of all, and discovering it right now was out of the question.

“Aldo would have wanted us to take care of you, too,” he finally announced gruffly. 

“I can take care of myself, Lincoln. I sort of specialize in the taking care business.” She gave him a wry smile and gestured remindingly at LJ. 

“You should stay until we know things have calmed down. That’s why we’re here, to lay low until all the conspirators are locked up and prosecuted.” 

“I know how to lay low, too.” 

“Stay, Jane,” he said, his voice deep and commanding. 

Her eyes flickered to LJ for a moment before coming back to Lincoln’s face. She inclined her head slightly, pursing her lips momentarily. “All right,” she agreed. 

Lincoln heard her unspoken, _For now_ , clear as a bell. 

He figured they could argue about it later. As dead-ass tired as he felt right then, he thought he might sleep for a month straight. 

 

 

Within a few days, Jane noticed he didn’t sleep 24 hours a day, but he definitely slept more than he was awake. Finally, after about two weeks of that, she found Sara alone in the living room. “Do you think he’s depressed?” she asked anxiously, looking into the doctor’s face for signs of truthfulness. 

“I think they’re both exhausted, Jane. They’ve been through too much the last little while. They need to recuperate. Sleep is part of the healing process.” 

“Michael doesn’t sleep as much as Lincoln does,” Jane pointed out, reaching for the tube of sun block on the coffee table, which is what she had been looking for in the first place. 

“Michael deals with things differently,” Sara said with a small smile. 

Jane’s gaze shifted away as she smoothed the SPF 45 sunscreen over her skin. The house was well built, but one would have had to be deaf to not know what was going on behind Michael and Sara’s closed bedroom door. “You don’t think we should be worried?” she asked. 

Reaching out, Sara squeezed Jane’s hand. “No. I think we should let them heal, however they need to heal. But keep your eye on him, and we’ll talk about it again if things don’t change soon. Lincoln lost a lot of people. And even though Michael lost the same people, they had a different meaning to Lincoln.” 

“You mean Veronica and Aldo?” 

“And LJ’s mother. But yes, especially Veronica and Aldo.” When Jane tossed the sunscreen back on the table, Sara asked, “You going for a swim?” The house they stayed in was not near the water, but it had its own pool in the backyard. 

“Yeah, I guess so.” 

“Where’s LJ?” Lincoln demanded from behind them, storming into the living room where they sat. 

Jane and Sara both turned around in surprise. “I think he went with Michael into the city. Why?” Sara asked. 

“He left me another note and another bottle of green tea. I’m about sick to death of it.” 

Jane started laughing. 

“Shut up, this is all your fault,” Lincoln snapped. 

“How was I to know my drink of choice would become your son’s obsession? He just wants you to be healthy.” Stretching out a hand toward Lincoln, she wiggled her fingers so he would hand her the note, and asked, “What does this one say?” 

“None of your damn business,” he barked, snatching the note up high as though she might take it from him. Turning on his heel, he headed back towards the bedroom. 

Jane turned her eyes back to Sara, who looked a little quizzical. “Everyday since we’ve been together, LJ has taken copious notes on all the good things about green tea. I had no idea what it was for, but now he keeps leaving notes for Lincoln like, ‘Prevents Cardiovascular Disease!’ taped to the bottles. I think Linc thought it was funny at first, but now it’s just annoying him.” 

“I wondered,” Sara mused. “I heard them arguing about it the other day, but I thought they were arguing about who got the last green tea. I think now, LJ was trying to force Lincoln to drink it.” She smiled conspiratorially. “If he gets some green tea in his system, he won’t be able to sleep as much, that’s for sure.” 

Jane sighed as she got to her feet. “You really don’t think it’s something to worry about?” she asked, nodding her head in the direction of the hallway. 

“I really don’t. Give him some time.” 

“I don’t have much time to give,” Jane replied softly. 

“What?” Sara asked with a frown. 

“I got a call yesterday. They want me back in the field. New assignment. You know, just because we brought down some of the bad guys, doesn’t mean there aren’t still more out there.” 

 

 

Michael Scofield suspected he might never have been this happy if he hadn’t held up a bank. 

The thought makes him feel somewhat embarrassed and ashamed, but when he makes love to Sara Tancredi, he somehow can’t remember his embarrassment or shame any longer. And for the last two weeks, he has made love to her a lot. 

Because she lets him. 

She also makes love to him, which is probably the lesser of the two joys for himself. He doesn’t care about his own pleasure, instead he would rather spend hours taking her to heights he hopes she’s never been to before, and when she breathlessly tells him how much she loves him, he feels satisfied. 

Yeah, shame fades right away in light of her sweaty, sated smile. 

Resting in the aftermath, her fingers stroked over his skin languidly, and though she never followed the same lines twice, often when she traced the tattoo she asked him where it led. “Stop asking me that,” he said softly. “All the routes led to you, in the Infirmary. And that’s all that matters, and now we’re here, and I just want to enjoy being here.” 

“I am enjoying being here,” she whispered, snuggling against his chest. “I love you,” she breathed, kissing his chest fleetingly. “Can I ask you a question about Lincoln?” 

“Sure, shoot,” he responded, stretching his hand out to shut the lamp off. 

“Do you think he’s depressed?” 

“Depressed? No. He’s not using, and he’s not even interested in using. He always uses when he’s depressed.” 

“Perhaps he’s found another way of coping?” she suggested. 

“By...?” 

“Sleeping? Jane’s worried about him.” 

“Really?” Michael found himself smiling, and in the dark, apparently Sara could hear the smile because she jostled him. “What?” he asked. 

“Why are you smiling?” 

“Jane asked you about him?” 

“Yes.” 

“Because he was asking me about her just yesterday. Apparently, on information he’s pilfered from LJ, he’s concerned that she is grieving for our father, but not telling anyone. But, as he said to me, he’s afraid to ask her things about Dad because he doesn’t want to upset her, but he wants to ask her things so he, and by association, I, can understand our father better.” 

Sara’s fingers moved over his hipbone and Michael shifted her closer. “So Jane’s asking me about Lincoln and Lincoln’s asking you about Jane...” 

Michael chuckled, unable to help the laughter bubbling up in his throat. “Do you think...” 

“What about Veronica?” Sara asked, curiosity coating the question. 

“What about Veronica?” Michael repeated. 

“Wasn’t he in love with her?” 

“No. No, I don’t think so. I mean, a long time ago, they were, you know. But I think he just...like me, it’s horrible that she was caught in this big mess. She’s our oldest friend. I hardly have any memories without Vee, and it’s the same for Linc, but…you know, their romantic relationship was just such a long time ago. But Jane, she’s a possibility I really didn’t even think about until just now.” 

“Are we those annoying people who are so happy and in love that we just want everyone around us happy and in love too?” Sara wondered. 

“Oh, man, I hope not,” Michael said around a yawn.

“But we have to get them together, you know?” 

“Yeah, I know. We have to.” 

“Jane says she got a new assignment, and she has to leave soon. So we gotta work fast.” 

 

 

Jane turned her stereo up louder so as to drown out the lovebirds on the other side of her bedroom wall, but even after she couldn’t hear them anymore, she was restless. Glancing at the clock and seeing that it was nearing midnight didn’t make her suddenly tired either. Lincoln could sleep forever, but she could hardly get any at all. Maybe she wasn’t concerned about him so much as she was jealous of his ability to get three times as much sleep as she did on any given day. 

Even thinking about Lincoln was enough to make her more restless. Everything about this situation made her restless. She had this strange desire to fit, to belong in this family she’d been plopped down in the middle of, but she didn’t fit, she wasn’t anything, except apparently the bodyguard. And she could do that for strangers, and do it better for strangers. You should never be emotionally involved with the people you protect. Two days with LJ had ended her impartiality forever. She loved that kid as if he was her own, even though she would have been barely his age when he was born if he were hers. 

But biology didn’t have anything to do with it. It was undoubtedly Aldo’s DNA that attracted her, as she adored all of the men who resided in this house, though some drove her a little more mad than others. The guy before Lincoln who had hit her in the mouth had not lived to see the next day. This time, however, she’d had no desire to kill him. Kill _for_ him, sure. But being here with him, but not being here _with him_ was slowly torturing her. And knowing that Michael and Sara were having some pretty amazing sex all the damn time didn’t help any, either.

She needed to leave, and leave soon, before it got worse. And yet, even the thought of leaving gave her a great big ache in the center of her chest. Telling them good-bye for good would be harder than any of the assignments she’d ever had as an agent. Staying in the trenches with them appealed to her for reasons she couldn’t articulate—for reasons she didn’t want to think about. 

Finally giving in to her restlessness, she put her swimsuit on and headed out to the pool. Diving in, the water was a bit cooler than the air temperature, though in Panama, she’d noticed it was always hot one way or another. The pool was slightly refreshing during the daytime because it was solar heated, but in the evening it cooled off considerably. The shock to her system was good and she did several lengths of the pool without stopping, until her muscles were burning. 

Coming up for air at the end of the pool closest to the house, she almost shrieked in fright when, looking up, she saw Lincoln standing there in his swimming trunks. “Oh, shit!” she burst out. “You scared me!” 

His arms were folded over his bare chest and he looked down at her inquiringly. “Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t sound very sorry. 

“What are you doing out here?” she asked, slicking her hair back with one hand while she held on to the edge of the pool with the other. 

“Can’t sleep.” 

“You?” she asked incredulously. 

“Yeah, me, why?” he asked, sitting down next to her. He stuck his feet in the water, but made no move to get in the pool. 

“Lincoln, you sleep all day. Forgive me if I find it hard to believe you’re having a hard time sleeping.” 

“I sleep all day, because usually I’m out here swimming at night. Who can sleep with Michael and Sara going at it like rabbits? Lucky for LJ, he had ear infections when he was a kid, so he doesn’t hear so good.” 

“Oh,” Jane said, feeling somewhat foolish for her worry. Pushing herself away from the side of the pool, she treaded water and kept her gaze on his face. He was watching her, and she would have loved to peruse his half-naked body, but she didn’t want to be obvious about it. 

“Aren’t they driving _you_ nuts?” he asked. 

“I usually just turn up my CD player. Tonight I felt…sorta restless, a swim seemed like a good idea. I had no idea you…” 

“Hey, I don’t blame you. The pool’s big enough for the both of us, anyway,” he said, using one arm to lever himself up and out before sliding into the water. 

The push of his body against the water moved Jane farther away from him momentarily and then he must have used his feet to launch himself towards the other end of the pool, because he shot past her. He did the same exercise she had just finished, swimming several lengths without stopping, so she let herself float to the side, far out of his way. Watching him was its own kind of turn on, because he was strong and swift and he swam twice as many lengths as she did in about the same length of time, and Jane knew she was in good shape. 

When he emerged, he looked around for her and smiled when he saw her resting against the side of the pool. “You want to race?” he asked, slightly breathless. 

“No,” she murmured shaking her head. “You’re obviously better than me, I’d lose.” 

He cut through the water so that they were much closer together and Jane felt her body tense up. Pressing herself against the concrete, the water lapped at her face a little harshly as he got near her. “You don’t go into something knowing you might lose?” he asked, crowding her with his body and his words. 

“All the time, actually. It’s my job, after all,” she responded, lifting her chin to show him he couldn’t intimidate her. “So when I don’t have to, I don’t.” 

Water sluiced down from the inch-long hair plastered to his scalp, running over his face, and the droplets clinging to his eyelashes and cheekbones made her want to lick him clean. She hadn’t even admitted it to herself entirely until just this moment, but he lit her spark like no other man ever had. She thought the head butt was just the start of it, because that proved he could manhandle her, and there weren’t a lot of people who could do that. She was a tough bitch who had been trained to kill bigger men than Lincoln Burrows, but the only kind of clench she wanted to get into with him involved her legs around his waist or his neck, wherever and however she could get his mouth on her in some way. 

His hands landed on the concrete on either side of her head and she realized something of what she was thinking must be showing on her face because his expression had changed from a playful challenge to a deep, dark hunger that made her ache. “This is probably because we’re the only ones not having sex, you know,” he breathed, bringing his mouth close to her temple. His words whispered across her skin, but she kept her hands under the water, pressed firmly to the concrete behind her. 

Jane acknowledged that for him, that was probably all it was, and you know, a woman, _any woman_ , after no women for such a long time. “How long were you inside?” she asked. 

He blinked, drawing his head back just slightly. “Inside?” 

“Prison. Fox River? How long?” 

“Three and a half years, almost. Long time.” 

“That’s probably more your problem than Michael and Sara,” she said softly, before scissoring her legs out to brush against his. 

“My problem is probably that you’re hot as hell, Jane,” he muttered, using his hands to pull himself closer again until his entire body brushed hers from shoulders to knees. 

She appreciated the sentiment, even though she doubted he really meant it. “You don’t have to sweet talk me,” she said. 

He studied her face for a moment before pushing himself away from her. “Come on,” he said, catching her by the elbow and pulling her out into the middle of the pool with him. “Race me.” 

Knocked off balance by the fact that he hadn’t kissed her, when she was sure that had been his intent, she shrugged, trying to appear as indifferent as possible and kicked towards the end of the pool closest to them. “Okay,” she said. “If I win, you have to do something for me.” 

“What’s that?” he asked 

“Drink a green tea, and satisfy your son.” 

She heard him laugh, and that somehow made her hotter than she already was. “Okay, deal.” He caught up with her so they were both ready to shove off from the north end of the pool. “And if I win…” 

“Whatever you want,” Jane said, and she couldn’t make her meaning any plainer. 

His eyes flashed over her face and then dropped below the surface of the water. She hardly looked sexy in a t-back one-piece swimsuit, but again, she knew it wasn’t her specifically; she was a woman, and he needed one, and she would do. He nodded and looked towards the other end of the pool. “One, two, three!” he shouted and they were off. 

Halfway through the first lap, Jane realized she didn’t know if they were going just to the opposite end of the pool or all the way back to the start, but it didn’t really matter because he was going to win anyway. She wanted him to win. Because she wanted to be the woman who brought him back to the human race. 

When she hit the other end of the pool, she flipped herself automatically, intending to head back to the start, but his hand wrapped around her ankle and stopped her. Yanking her back towards him, he growled, “I won,” and his lips landed on hers without delay. 

His hands were sure and firm, sliding down her back to cup her ass, pulling her against him. His tongue entered her mouth as he settled her legs around his waist and she felt the thickness of his erection at the apex of her thighs. She arched against him and tightened her legs as much as possible, but because they were in the deep end of the pool, they sank below the surface as their kissing grew ravenous. 

They were already both short on air to begin with, having swum the length of pool combined with a heavy kiss, so Lincoln pushed them both back towards the shallow end. When they bobbed up, gasping for breath together, he laughed again and Jane wrapped her arms around his neck to pull his face back to hers. “This isn’t a good idea,” he breathed as he dipped his head and flicked his tongue over her lips. 

“You kissed me,” she pointed out. “You can have whatever you want, Burrows. You don’t have to have this if it’s not what you want.” 

He seemed to be having a hard time dragging his eyes away from her lips. “You know it’s what I want,” he muttered, pressing himself more tightly against her, as though she couldn’t already feel him through his trunks. “But I’m all fucked up right now, Jane. You’re…” his hand cupped her face, smoothing her hair back as his thumb caressed the line of her chin and cheek. “You’re beautiful, and real, and you make me think life can be good, but I don’t know if I’m totally ready to go back into it yet.” 

Their eyes connected and she lost her breath at the sincerity she saw there. He wasn’t a guy on the make, much to her surprise, but then again, could Aldo’s son really be anything less than totally upright? He didn’t know his own father was the best man Jane had ever known, yet if nature had any leverage over nurture, she believed it about both Lincoln and Michael. They had inherited their father’s incessant need to fix things, to make sure things were better. They were just more adept at doing it in their own lives as opposed to the lives of strangers. 

With her arms and legs still around him, she levered herself up until her lips could reach his. She kissed him softly, slowly, keeping her eyes open and on his as she did so. He responded shyly, carefully, and when he shifted slightly, letting her know he would have surrendered to what she was offering, she dropped herself down from around him, letting her feet touch the bottom of the pool. At the shallow end, the water covered Lincoln to just below his navel and she ran a hand across his stomach lightly as she moved around him. Pressing her mouth to the curve of his shoulder, she fitted herself up against his back, letting her breasts correspond to the natural upward slope of his spine. “Jane?” he questioned. 

“Shhhh,” she whispered, brushing her lips against his shoulder blade. “Let me do this,” she said softly, running her hand over his stomach again. The hard muscles there quivered at her touch and then undulated as he took a big breath in response to her dipping her hand over the front of his swimming trunks. With both her arms surrounding his middle section, she tugged the waistband out with one hand, pulling his shorts down to free him so the other one could wrap securely around his cock. 

He groaned as her fingers slid down the rigid length and his hands reached out, landing on the edge of the concrete lip of the pool. “Jane…” he breathed, but as he swelled in response to the combination of her strokes and his own need, even if it had been a protest, she would have ignored it. “Oh, God,” he moaned quietly, his head falling forward. She wondered if he watched her hand as it caressed him, and pressing her face against his heated skin, began moving her hand more quickly over him, squeezing and shaping him to her palm. His hips started thrusting in time with her rhythm, and soon, though he lasted longer than she expected, he cried out as he came, a wrenching “Ah-ah-ah-ah,” that made Jane clench her legs together as the sound of his satisfaction shot painful longing through all her soft, warm places. 

She felt his breaths shuddering heavily through his torso, but when one of his hands left the side of the pool to reach for her, to gently touch her, she merely pulled his shorts back up, kissed his shoulder blade again softly and swam away from him. She hefted herself up at the opposite end of the pool and didn’t look back as she scooped up her towel and headed into the house.


	2. Chapter 2

A few days later, Sara ran to answer a knock at the door. When she saw it was a package delivery guy, she was skeptical of the package’s contents and called for Michael to come and look at it before she signed for it.   
“What is it?” he asked, giving the delivery guy a smile. 

“It’s from a George Donovan,” Sara said, pointing at the return address. “Moline, Illinois? You know anyone in Moline?” 

“No,” Michael shook his head. “But I know a George Donovan. That’s Vee’s dad. Linc! Linc, come here, please!” 

A moment later Lincoln appeared in the front hallway and asked, “What’s up?” 

“Do you know where Vee’s dad lives?” 

“Uh…no. I mean, he moved away from Chicago when, no—wait, after she came home from law school, but I don’t remember where he moved to. Almost to Iowa, I think. What is it?” he asked, coming closer. 

“It’s a package addressed to you and I,” Michael said, looking back at his brother. “From George Donovan.” 

“How would he even know where we are?” Lincoln asked suspiciously. 

“I have no idea, but who else could it be?” 

Sara looked back at the delivery guy, who was standing by patiently while they discussed it. “Just sign for it, Michael. We’ll have Jane look at it. If it’s got a bomb in it, she’ll dismantle it.” 

A chuckle escaped Michael’s mouth at that remark and he patted Sara’s back gently. “You sign for it. I’ll go find Jane.” 

As Sara signed for the package and thanked the deliveryman, Lincoln moved closer, taking the package from her. “What do you think it could be?” she asked him. 

“I have no idea,” he said looking down at the handwriting on the box top. “I haven’t seen George Donovan since…” he shook his head and his eyes went up to the ceiling briefly as he searched his memory. “Hell, since before Vee went to law school. It’s been almost 15 years, at least. I guess I owe him a visit anyway, he did lose his daughter over all this. Sometimes I forget that she wasn’t our family, you know? It was the three of us all growing up, almost like we had nobody but each other. Someone besides me and Mike had their hearts busted open when she was murdered.” 

Michael came back just then. “Jane said she’ll look at it. Let’s see what she thinks.” 

A few minutes later, they all congregated at the kitchen table and Jane looked at the box carefully and then pressed her ear to it. “I think it’s fine, really,” she said as verdict. “We’re probably just being a bit paranoid.” 

“I can’t imagine why,” Lincoln huffed out. Sara noticed Jane’s eyes cut to him, but never made a connection to his, and he looked immensely annoyed by that. 

“Let’s just open it,” Michael suggested. He had a box cutter in his hand and he looked at his brother, then his nephew and then quickly to Sara and Jane. “I love you all, you know, in case I’m about to blow up.” 

LJ was the only one who laughed, and he quickly stifled it. 

As he pulled the box flaps back a few seconds later, Sara leaned closer to see what was inside the box. A letter rested on top and Michael pulled it out, handing it to Lincoln as he examined the other contents. Sara saw piles of photographs and a couple videotapes as well as some framed photos of Lincoln and Veronica alone as well as one of the three of them together. 

“Dear Lincoln and Michael,” Lincoln began. “I hope this finds you well. I can imagine you’re wondering how I found you, and it was no easy task, I assure you. But it was worth the time it took, so hopefully this will reach you with no problems. I cleaned out Vee’s apartment recently, and I found all these things relating to you boys. I know what happened now, because the story has been the only thing on the news for the last two weeks, and the authorities contacted me as part of the on-going investigation. While I can’t say I understand entirely, I do know that if she had to die young, doing it for you two would have been the way she would have wanted to go.” His voice broke off suddenly and Sara reached for Michael’s hand as both Jane and LJ flanked Lincoln. When he couldn’t go on, Jane tugged the letter from his hand and continued to read, “She loved you boys with everything she had, always did, and I was reminded of it when I found all this stuff. I thought you should have it. Good luck, and may God bless you. Regards, George Donovan.” 

Jane’s hand dropped down, but then she jerked the paper back up to her face. “This is dated three days ago. He must have had it sent next day air. What is it?” 

“Pictures,” Michael said, his voice rather croaky. Sara wrapped her arm around him and rested her cheek against his shoulder while he picked up various photographs. “Remember, Linc? She always took pictures of us because we didn’t have any. They got lost with our many shuffles through Foster care.” 

Lincoln nodded his head, but as Sara looked at him, she saw his throat work as he struggled to contain his emotions. LJ’s hand touched his father’s arm reassuringly, and Sara thought perhaps Jane would have liked to touch him herself because her hand flexed over his other arm before she aborted the action. Instead she folded the letter neatly and set in on the table in front of Lincoln. “There’s one of me, when I’m a baby,” LJ said, reaching into the box and pulling out a shot of a younger Lincoln with a baby on his hip and a younger, beautiful Veronica standing next to him with her arm around him. Sara noticed there were literally hundreds of photographs, and she hungrily wanted to look through them herself, and examine Michael through all the ages of his life. Bless Veronica for being so meticulous, even at a young age. 

“What’s on the videotapes?” Sara asked, pulling them out. 

“Who knows?” Michael said, clearing his throat. “Are they labeled?” 

“Just says Lincoln’s name on one, Veronica’s on the other,” Sara said, looking up at Michael’s brother. “Do you know what they are?” she asked. 

Nodding again, he moved away from the table, as though he needed space between him and that box. “We made living wills…Vee’s idea, fresh out of law school.” Suddenly he moved back towards the table and grabbed the tapes out of Sara’s hand. “Remember, Mike?” he asked. “She wanted you to make one too, but then…” 

“Then you guys broke up, again,” Michael inserted quietly. 

“For the last time. I didn’t see her again, not until…” he shook his head and his fingers slid over the edges of the videotapes like they were ancient relics. 

Sara knew the rest; it wasn’t until he had been arrested for Steadman’s murder that Veronica had come back into his life. “I did make one, though, Linc. But she gave me mine. Why didn’t she give you yours?” 

Lincoln looked back up at his brother. “Probably thought I’d lose it. God, why did she have to die? Why is this…” he trailed off and shook his head again. “It just hurts,” he whispered, and Michael moved away from Sara to put his arm around his brother. “I hurt,” he said, slightly above a whisper, pressing his fingers to the middle of his chest. 

“I know,” Michael said quietly, drawing Lincoln into an embrace. 

Jane caught Sara’s attention by waving a hand at her. She motioned for both LJ and Sara to follow her, and they left the brothers alone in the kitchen with their memories of Veronica Donovan. 

 

 

Lincoln went to his and LJ’s bedroom and put Veronica’s tape in the VCR. Then he pushed play, but he didn’t turn the TV on. He sat on the end of the bed and thought about turning it on, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Finally, he just let himself cry and Michael found him some time later sitting on the floor at the end of the bed with the remote in his hand. 

“Linc,” Michael said softly, easing himself down next to his brother on the floor. But there were no words, Lincoln knew Michael felt the same pain he did, but they had avoided it as long as possible.

“Running from it doesn’t make it go away, and now I’ve got this,” he motioned at the television. “I want to see her, but I don’t, you know?”

“I know,” Michael said heavily.

“The worst part about it? She really was my best friend, you know? My whole life, she was the best friend I ever had. Saved my ass so many times, was _always_ there. It meant so much because no one else was always there.”

“I know,” Michael repeated, his hand moving to Lincoln’s shoulder comfortingly.

“I can’t watch it. Maybe someday. Not now.” He set the remote down on the floor, and drew his legs up to rest his arms on. “I wish…” he broke off. “Sometimes,” he amended, “I wish you’da just let me go, Mike. There are a lot of people who would still be here if you had.”

“You don’t know that,” Michael argued quickly. “You don’t know what would have happened. Even if you’d died, we would have been searching for the truth.” Michael sighed, squeezing Lincoln’s shoulder tightly. “We might have all ended up dead if you hadn’t chosen to fight for your own life.”

“He’s right,” came Jane’s voice from the open doorway.

Lincoln’s head jerked up. It was the first time she had looked him in the eyes since their whatever-it-was encounter in the pool three days before. He just stared at her, feeling anger swell up inside him. He didn’t try to hide anything, in fact, he might have thrown her his most challenging gaze. He might have said with his eyes, _don’t fuck with me like you did the other night_. Could she convince him of something Michael couldn’t? Could she convince him that feeling guilty about being glad he was alive was stupid?

“He’s right,” Jane repeated, her gaze never faltering. “Your father would never have stopped, and if you had been killed, that would have driven him even harder to expose The Company. Lincoln, he had been working on that for years, but it wasn’t until his own family was threatened that he was able to accomplish much. Fear is a great motivator. It was war, and people die in war. It’s not pretty, and it doesn’t make it hurt any less, but that’s the truth.” She put a hand against the doorjamb as she turned to walk away, but her head swiveled back and her eyes met his forcefully. “When you realize you cry for yourself and not for her, you’ll be a lot better off.”

That statement, and Jane walking away right then inflamed Lincoln above and beyond the rage he’d already simmered under for several days, and he started to get to his feet and chase after her, but Michael’s fingers wrapped around his upper arm, holding him back. “Linc, don’t. You’re emotional right now, and fighting with her is not going to make you feel better.”

“It might,” he huffed out, but he let Michael hold him in place. “Who does she think she is? She doesn’t know anything about me,” he said angrily, pulling his arm from Michael’s restraining grasp. He wasn’t planning on going anywhere, but he didn’t like being held back either.

“She’s the woman who knew our father. You said it yourself the other day. If we are going to know anything about him, we need her. We need her to tell us about him.”

Lincoln didn’t respond. He knew that was true, so there was no point in acknowledging it. But he didn’t like it, the feeling that she held something over him. He didn’t like how she controlled everything, like how much information he had about things, like how much she knew about his son, like how much she really _did_ know about him. And he really hated what had happened that night in the pool. He hated it so much he’d drained the pool and lied to LJ, Michael and Sara when they asked why. He knew Michael didn’t believe his lie about algae, but it hadn’t mattered what he thought it did or didn’t mean. Jane hadn’t said a word, and he told himself he didn’t care what she thought it meant. He hated being vulnerable to her; he hadn’t hated the sex, as it were, but without her in the same position, without her having had a similar experience to his, it grated on him badly. She had given him relief, but she hadn’t shared anything with him, hadn’t let him make her feel as good as he had, for just a few minutes. As a result, irrational anger had become his constant companion when he looked at her, mostly spurred on by the fact that up until a couple minutes ago, when he did look at her, she wouldn’t meet his eyes. But he didn’t mention any of that to Michael.

“We need her to tell us about him before she leaves,” Michael said, bringing his thoughts back around to them, right now, in this room, and not Lincoln, hot and heavy in the pool with Jane. Or Lincoln pissed because Jane wouldn’t acknowledge him. Or just mad as hell that the structure of their relationship seemed to be so majorly fucked up.

“Before she leaves?” he questioned, panic causing him to turn his head to look at his brother.

“She told Sara she has another assignment, and she has to leave soon.”

“Fuck,” Lincoln muttered as every conflicting emotion he could feel filled him to overflowing. 

 

 

Jane went with LJ into the city later that day. She wanted to go to an Internet café to purchase a plane ticket, and LJ just wanted to go with her, so she took the opportunity to tell him she would be leaving shortly. The disappointment on his face speared her heart, and she lied optimistically about coming back when her next job was over.

She knew leaving would be for the best, for all of them. She didn’t like the helpless feeling she had whenever she looked at Lincoln, and nothing good could come of that. The only person she’d let herself care about in the last five years had been Aldo Burrows, and then, by association, his family. But almost two months with LJ had been enough to push her over the edge to realize the one thing she wanted was the one thing she’d been willing to sacrifice in the past, the thing she’d been happy to live without. A family wasn’t in the cards for her, and neither was a romantic entanglement with a man, who admittedly, was fucked up. Fucked up and unlikely to heal any time soon.

They were too much alike, in reality. Opposites were supposed to attract, but not in this case. She saw too much of herself in him, too much of her own repressed feelings reflected on his face. And he had become much too important in too short a span of time, and Jane had never been one to waste her time and energy. She didn’t want this, had never wanted this, so the best thing to do would be to take the job, get her head back in the game she was good at, and leave it all behind.

Lying to LJ was easier than telling him she’d never see him again. She could hardly contain her own sorrow over the prospect, so there was no way she could handle the adolescent rant he was entitled and bound to go on.

After they arrived back at the house, she grabbed him by the arm before he could get out of the car. “Let me tell them all, okay?” she asked quietly.

LJ nodded. He had a bag full of green tea bottles and gave her a smile to cover up the upset they both felt at being apart. “I’ve got to go label these.”

“He just doesn’t like green tea, LJ. It’s not a big deal.”

“He hasn’t even tried it. How does he know he doesn’t like it? He doesn’t! You don’t understand him; he’s like a big kid. This is about who can withstand who the longest. I’m going to win, and he’s going to drink one.”

Jane laughed because she couldn’t help it. His determination was endearing. “Well, good luck,” she murmured as he got out of the car.

“You’re the one who’s going to need it,” LJ said solemnly. “When you tell him you’re leaving, it’s not going to be pretty.”

 

 

As it turned out, Jane didn’t need to tell Lincoln anything, because when she walked into the house, he grabbed her arm, dragged her through the house, and out to the back patio. As he shoved her through the doorway, he saw her fists clench. For a split second he almost screamed at her to go ahead and punch him because then maybe touching her wouldn’t seem like some sort of favor he’d been granted.

“I told you when we first got here, you don’t have to leave,” he said with barely contained rage, throwing his hands up, both as a way to stop touching her and to show her how frustrated he felt to be having this conversation again.

Her fists landed on her hips emphatically, and Jane appeared ready to square off. She was primed and ready for a fight, and something stirred in his belly at the thought. “I told _you_ from the beginning I didn’t need to be here. And I still don’t. I’ve got places to go, things to do.”

“Is that right?” he asked, trying hard to hold on to his temper. Michael had advised _not yelling_ as a way to show Jane he wanted her to stay, but he would need several days to get a hold of his temper, and he didn’t have several days, so he figured there would probably be yelling, no matter what his intentions were.

“I have a job, Lincoln.”

“You don’t need to do that job anymore!” he snapped. “It’s over. The conspiracy is _over_.”

“I know most people are ego-centric, but come on! There are other situations in the world. There are other evil people. There are other innocent people in danger.”

“So, it’s your job to rescue the whole fuckin’ world?” Lincoln asked, stalking closer to her, invading her personal space.

“I don’t have to explain this to you,” she said, lifting her chin. “It’s my job, and I have to go.”

“You’ve already been a hero, Jane. You don’t have to keep doing it. Going back out there,” he jabbed a finger toward the fence to indicate the world past their perimeter, “won’t bring Aldo back.”

He could see he’d hit the mark because she instantly stiffened, and when he would have lifted his hands to hold her to him by her arms, she spun away. He almost reached out to snatch her back, to make her face him, but she didn’t move that far from him. Instead she just stood rigidly, and he quickly feared that if he finally got the nerve to touch her in the next five seconds, she might shatter into a thousand pieces. She always wore black, linen slacks and white button up shirts, he supposed because it was like a uniform to her, and she always looked so clean and crisp, and he thought he would somehow wrinkle her, like she would have thumb-print sized smudges everywhere his hands had been. That night in the pool had been the only time he’d felt confident enough to put his hands on her the way he wanted to. “Jane,” he whispered.

“You don’t know anything about me,” she said, her voice quivering; the echo of his own anger in her statement stunned him. “You think you know something, but trust me, Lincoln, you don’t know _anything_!” She shouted, turning almost to face him, but not quite making it. “You don’t know what I’ve done, or what I’ve been through. You don’t know about the people I’ve killed. We aren’t the same, you and I. My mourning your father is not like you and Michael and your little Veronica memorial service.”

Lincoln’s head snapped back like she’d slapped his face. He narrowed his eyes at her and attempted to rein in his temper, but really, it was a lost cause. “I suppose that’s true,” he said in vehement agreement. “Veronica is worth mourning, while my father just did us all a favor and became as dead to us as he ever was!”

This time his head snapped back because she punched him. It wasn’t a girl slap, either, but her fist doubled up, landing hard against the corner of his mouth, the whole of her body weight channeled into the power in her right arm. It caught him by surprise and knocked him flat on his back. When he looked up at her, she trembled with rage; he could see her entire body shaking. “You don’t know,” she said lowly. “You don’t get to say things about what you don’t know.”

Stepping over him, she marched back into the house, and he just stayed where he was, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. Cursing himself, he realized he’d handled that far worse than even he’d imagined he’d handle it. “Fuck!” 

“That went well,” Michael said a moment later, as his head appeared in the space over Lincoln’s body.

“Shut up,” he responded.

“She’s supposed to leave in four days, Linc. What are you going to do?”

Closing his eyes, Lincoln shook his head. “I have no fuckin’ idea,” he muttered.


	3. Chapter 3

That evening, Michael found Sara in their bedroom, looking at the photographs Veronica’s dad had sent them. “What are you doing?” he asked, sitting down next to her on the bed.

“Looking at you, when you were all cute and little,” Sara said, lifting her mouth to his for a soft, sweet kiss.

“Those days are long past, I suppose?” Michael asked, pulling a picture from the bottom of the pile.

“Well, you’re still cute. Not so much with the littleness.”

“You think I’m cute?” he asked, examining a photo of him, Lincoln and Veronica at Lake Michigan.

“Of course, I think you’re cute,” she said. “Look at this one. That snowman has a walkman on his belt. You really dressed him up.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember that. Veronica got that for Christmas, and it was my idea, to put it on the snowman, and the water ruined it. Totally killed the motorboard, and she’d had it for like three days. But she didn’t get mad at me.”

“Veronica seems like a wonderful person, Michael.”

“She was a wonderful person. I can’t say enough about her, even if I had the words.” He slid an arm around Sara’s hips and tugged her closer to him. “She loved us. Lincoln and I had so little love, you know, real love, after Mom died. But we still managed to take Vee for granted. She never let us down, though. I think she forgave us for being so emotionally damaged.”

“Speaking of that,” Sara said, putting the photos back in the box and pushing it aside. “You think Jane will forgive Lincoln’s emotional damage? It’s like a storm cloud has settled over this house.”

“She’s leaving at the end of the week, so it doesn’t really matter.”

Allowing Michael to recline them both to a prone position on their bed, Sara said, “That isn’t much time to play matchmaker. What are we going to do?” she asked.

“I’ve been thinking about that all evening, and short of locking them in a room somewhere together, I don’t know. Of course, judging from Linc’s fat lip, they might kill each other.”

A knock came at their door, and Michael called, “Come in.”

LJ walked through the door stealthily, as though someone might be watching him. “We’ve got to do something about Dad and Jane,” he announced.

Sara glanced at Michael with a smile in her eyes and then looked back at LJ. “What do you have in mind?” she asked.

“I don’t know what he said to her, but I think he broke her heart. I’ve never seen her like that. She was almost _crying_. She never cries!”

“Are you suggesting we get him to apologize?” Michael asked sarcastically.

LJ snorted. “Like that would ever happen. No. I stole her plane ticket confirmation information out of her purse. And there’s only two cars here, we could take them, and they’ll be stranded.”

“LJ, we’re like a mile from the city center. Stranding them here isn’t going to strand them at all.”

“I’m going to leave Dad a note. I’ll leave him a note telling him he’s got to make Jane stay or…”

“You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?” Michael asked, sitting up. It was obvious they would have to brainstorm, all three of them, if they were really going to accomplish anything. “Come here,” he said, waving a hand at LJ.

 

 

It was after midnight, _again_ , and Jane couldn’t sleep. _Again_. This time she couldn’t even hear anything coming from Sara and Michael’s room, so she couldn’t blame them. And she couldn’t go into Lincoln’s room and weed out the aggression that decking him had only served to inflame. Well, she could go in there, but there was nothing like a 17-year-old boy in the room to create awkwardness.

So finally, she opted to go to the kitchen and see if she could eat away her misery. 

As she padded out into the living room, she was surprised to find LJ, sitting on the sofa watching television. She paused for a moment when she heard Lincoln’s voice, but then she realized he wasn’t out there with LJ, but that the boy was watching one of the videotapes George Donovan had sent. Lincoln sat in a plain white room on a straight-backed chair and looked at the camera uncomfortably, but he was speaking, and as she stood there, she realized it must be near the end of his will. He looked younger, softer in some ways, harder in others. When he stopped talking for a moment, she edged closer and then heard the emotion in his voice. “Mike, you take care of LJ. I know you can be the dad to him he’d need if I’m not around. I know you might think you wouldn’t be any good at it since the only dad you ever had was me, and I pretty much sucked, but you’ll be fine. You love LJ, and he loves you, and that’s all you really need. I know. He loves me, even though I still pretty much suck.” The date in the corner of the video read 2-23-1998. “I love you both, so much.” His fingers reached up and wiped at his eyes. “Can we call this good, now, Vee?” he asked, looking beyond the camera. “I must look like you did after you watched _Titanic_.” Jane heard a girlish giggle and then the screen went black.

LJ sat in the dark, the only light in the room coming from the television. When he pushed stop on the VCR, the local station was playing some infomercial. Jane moved forward and made her presence known. “What are you doing, kiddo?” she asked.

He jumped and wiped at his own cheeks hastily. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Did I wake you up? I tried to keep it low.”

“No, you didn’t wake me. Just couldn’t sleep.”

He gestured at the TV with the remote in his hand. “I wanted to watch these, but Dad’s not ready, so I brought them out here.”

Jane sat down on the couch with him, patting his leg as she did so. “I just saw the tail end. It’s nice to know he always loved you, huh?” she asked.

Smiling sheepishly, LJ ducked his head. “It’s dumb, I know. After everything. But yeah, it’s nice to know. I was just a kid then. Like 7, and he made a plan, for if something happened to him. I mean, it was Veronica’s idea, but it still—it’s sweet, you know? And I don’t always think of sweet when I think of my dad.”

“Tell me about it,” Jane breathed in agreement. “Sweet doesn’t come to my mind either.”

“What does come to mind?” LJ asked inquisitively.

“Um…jackass?” she supplied with a laugh.

“You’re the one who hit him,” LJ pointed out. “What did he say that made you so mad?” Jane shook her head. “Come on, Jane. Tell me,” LJ pleaded. “If you’re gonna leave, and he’s gonna be miserable, then I might as well know everything, don’t you think?”

Jane’s eyes snapped back to LJ’s face. “He’s not going to be miserable when I leave,” she said reasonably. “As for what he said…it was a remark about your grandfather. It’s hard for us, because we both knew two different versions of Aldo, so we’re both sensitive about it. He didn’t mean to make me as angry as he did. And I didn’t mean to hit him. I really should apologize for that.”

“I don’t know about that,” LJ said. “He’s mean when he wants to be. But you’re wrong about him being not miserable if you leave.” When Jane started to shake her head, LJ reached out and grabbed her by the chin. “Look. You don’t know him as good as I do. You don’t. So just listen. He’s not good at saying what he wants or what he needs. In fact, most of the time he won’t say it. I think the only time he’s ever been straight with me was when he thought he was gonna die.”

Jane pried LJ’s fingers from her face and tucked his hand into hers. “Honey,” she said softly, forcing him to look into her eyes. “You’re projecting. You want him to feel something for me that he doesn’t feel. You want him to want me here, like you want me here. And,” she suddenly felt tears at the back of her throat, much to her horror, “I can’t be your mom. I’m _not_ your mom. I love you to death, and I’ll always be there, if you need me. Just a phone call away, but—“

“That’s not true. You might go on one of these jobs and get killed. And I’m not projecting. Dad and I have talked. He can say things to me, because it’s me. He has a hard time saying what he wants to say to you. And he would kick my ass if he knew I was saying this right now, but Jane, you gotta trust me. You gotta have a little faith in this.”

“Faith in what, LJ?”

“That there’s a reason to stay.” His fingers squeezed hers. “That you want to stay for a good reason. Because I think you do want to stay.” He paused. “I want you to stay, Jane. I do. I’m not trying to pretend I don’t. And I’d love it if you stayed because…of my dad. I gotta say that within the first 24 hours of hanging out with you, I was pretty dang sure he would love you if he got a chance to know you. He might not tell you in words, but believe me when I say he doesn’t want you to leave. Pay attention to his actions. He’s louder in that way.”

Shaking her head again, she murmured his name quietly. “Just think about it,” he said. Getting to his feet, he leaned over her and pressed his lips to the top of her head. “You can always leave later, if it doesn’t work out,” he said as he walked away.

Flopping back on the couch, Jane considered herself more unsettled than when she’d left her room looking for comfort food. Grabbing the remote, she rewound the tape LJ had been watching and watched it from the beginning. All in all, it was only seven and a half minutes long, and it covered Lincoln’s wishes for what should be done if ever he was declared brain dead to what should happen to LJ in the event of his death. There were several pauses, in which he spoke to the off-camera Veronica, and the softness in his voice was rich and intoxicating. She could tell he’d loved the woman she’d only seen in pictures. Knowing he’d loved someone somehow made her chest ache, and she left that hollow feeling unnamed. After she turned the video off, she reached to set the remote on the coffee table only to see some of the ‘labels’ LJ made constantly for the green tea bottles he left in strategic places around the house. She flipped through them and realized they were either the originals or LJ was making new copies because they were the list of things one normally heard about the benefits of green tea. Each card was written in big block letters with exclamation points, like an advertisement: _Helps fight cancer! Helps prevent rheumatoid arthritis! Lowers cholesterol levels! Prevents cardiovascular disease! Fights infections! Elevates immune function!_ When she got to the bottom card, she started laughing. Not only was it not true, she now knew why Lincoln had become increasingly grumpy over the warning labels.

Smiling to herself, she jogged the cards together so that they were square and set them back on the table. He was part advice guru, part stubborn boy on a mission. Of course, the more she thought about it, maybe LJ just knew Lincoln, knew what he had to do to get his dad to do something that was good for him. Maybe he knew her well enough now too, and she wondered if staying for herself was something she was capable of doing. She hadn’t done anything for just herself in a long, long time.

Of course, before she met Lincoln Burrows, she hadn’t wanted to.

 

 

The next morning, Lincoln rolled over in bed and found a bottle of green tea on the nightstand. The card attached to it read, “Drink me, and lower your risk of stroke!”

Cursing LJ, he almost picked up the bottle and threw it against the far wall, but then he noticed another note, propped up next to it. “Me, Mike and Sara went to church! Now would be a good time to talk to Jane. Drink your tea! I love you, LJ.”

“Went to church?” he asked incredulously of the silent and empty bedroom. “What the fuck?” Dragging himself out of bed, he headed right for the shower, because there was little chance of running into Jane in there. Looking at himself in the mirror, he saw that his split lip seemed to be healing nicely. It suddenly occurred to him that she had possibly split his lip because he had split hers. It was more likely because he’d pissed her off and she’d reacted without thinking, but she did owe him a fat lip, and now they were even.

Thinking about being even with her reminded him that he owed her an orgasm, and he’d made up his mind while lying on the back patio like a lawn ornament that if he gave her nothing else before she left, he was determined to give her that. While the water pounded his body, he tormented himself with images of her, soft and wanting beneath him, and then he gave up that image for what would be more likely: him slamming her up against the wall and making her come whether she liked it or not.

He didn’t like how arousing the second image was to him.

By the time he left the bathroom and went in search of her, he was pretty well on his way to being incoherent. He wanted her, she was leaving, and he didn’t seem to know how to ask her to stay. It always ended up coming out like an order, and while she was a good little soldier, she didn’t want to obey him for anything.

She sat on the sofa in the living room, and he knew what she was doing even before he got all the way out there, because Veronica’s voice hit him about halfway up the hall. He stood at the edge of the living room and watched the videotape that Jane was already in the process of watching. “Okay, so that’s how I feel about life support when I’m already dead,” Vee said, rubbing her hands together. She looked solidly into the camera, and Lincoln suddenly remembered he hadn’t been allowed to watch her do it because she’d kept giggling, or rather he couldn’t help teasing her, causing her to laugh. He’d been banished from the room so she could complete the project alone. By the time she’d finished, he’d forgotten he’d wanted to watch it, and he’d pulled her down on the living room rug. He smiled remembering that, because afterwards he’d breathed, “We ought to videotape _that_ sometime.” Veronica had snorted, “Yeah, right, in your dreams, Linc,” and gone to sleep, soft and warm against his chest.

He rubbed his chest now, the area over his heart, and felt a pang of gratitude for Veronica. He’d been too sad for too long to realize that celebrating her was better than mourning her. And she was one of the best people he’d ever known. And he would always love her, love the things he’d learned because of her, and he would always know that he could love because she had taught him how to do it.

“Okay, my dad is my world, anybody who knows me knows that. I love him, and adore him, and as his only child I hate the idea of him being alone. But, Daddy, I hope that whatever the circumstances of my death are, that you know I had a great life. I did. You gave me enough love and confidence to be able to do anything. I’ve never doubted my abilities to get it done. Thank you. You also made me love boys, you know. I’ve been boy crazy since the start, and being best friends with Michael and Lincoln has probably been the most fun I’ve had. I never got on with other girls too much and that’s probably because I would have rather been running wild with the boys. Anyway, you both have to know how much I love you. Michael, you know I made it into college because I had you for a study partner. You’re too smart for your own good, and I’m sure it will get you into trouble someday. Linc, I don’t know what will happen with us. Sometimes I think we’re too volatile together, and it can’t end well no matter how much we want it to. But I love you, and I’ll always love you, whether we’re together or not. You told me once you would keep me forever, and we’ve been apart more than we’ve been together, but I’ve figured out that that keeping is a figurative one. You will always keep me, and I’ll always keep you. There’s something about us together that won’t let us let go, not entirely.” Lincoln felt the lump in his throat grow to gigantic proportions the longer she spoke; it was too prophetic, in every way. 

He moved into Jane’s line of vision. “Turn it off,” he said, the timber of his voice deep in his chest.

She jumped in surprise, but did exactly as she was told, pointing the remote at the television and shutting it off, not just the VCR. He stared at her face in shock. There were tears running down her cheeks. She wiped at her face with the sleeves of her shirt and set the remote aside. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“Who’re you crying for?” he asked meanly, caught off-guard by her display of emotion. “Her or yourself?” It surprised him that she cried at all, because despite the heat he’d felt in her, both sexually and when she’d punched him the face, he thought she was pretty masterful at being an ice queen.

Her hand slipped into his and she pulled his fingers to her lips. In a tender movement that made his heart hurt worse than watching Veronica explain their doomed relationship, Jane kissed his knuckles, his fingers, and then the palm of his hand. His eyes couldn’t move away from her mouth rubbing sweetly over his skin and she breathed the words so quietly if he hadn’t been entranced by the caress he wouldn’t have heard her. “I’m crying for you, you jackass.”

“Jane…” he started. It was futile. Whenever he tried to use words with her he got nowhere. Instead he dropped to his knees in front of her and pulled her into his arms. She opened to him instantly: her mouth, her body—her legs snaking around his thighs, her arms coiling around his neck. She kissed him, and let him kiss her with a new level of intimacy that she hadn’t allowed that night in the pool. 

And she cried the whole time.

He pulled her clothes off, not frantically but efficiently, and she deftly rid him of the t-shirt and shorts he’d put on after his shower. As they stretched out on the sofa, Lincoln had a brief moment to think that they ought to go to her room, but he couldn’t wait, didn’t want to wait, he just wanted to be with her, be as close to her as he could get. Once he was deep inside her, he carefully tempered his thrusts, making sure she was with him each step of the way. Slipping a hand between them, he stroked her externally while his internal strokes were met by her undulating hips. Their lips met, clung, retreated briefly only to find each other again, and Lincoln felt a joy he’d never known when she gasped and arched beneath him and he knew he’d brought her to the peak of pleasure.

Later, when they were both replete, her hands continued to caress his face and touch him as though she could never get enough. He kept kissing her lips and her cheeks, sipping the salt from her skin like it was cleansing him somehow. And maybe it was.

She looked at his mouth with a little sadness. “How’s your lip?”

“All right,” he said, noticing for the first time that it throbbed a little after all their activity. He took a deep breath and then said—

“I’m sorry,” at the same time she did.

“No, I’m sorry,” they both said.

“No, I’m—“ finally Jane held a hand up. “Let me go first, okay?” she asked.

Lincoln nodded.

“I’m sorry I hit you. It was uncalled for, even though what you said is totally wrong.”

He thought for an apology, it wasn’t a very good one. But knowing he’d just had her as vulnerable as he could get her took the sting out of her words. “I’m sorry that I said what I said, because it’s not even how I really feel. But if I did feel that way, I’d have a right, you know.”

She sighed loudly, but continued to caress his face with her fingers. “No, I don’t know. You know the truth, now, Lincoln. It’s your responsibility to play catch up between your adolescent ideas about your father and your emotions. Don’t disparage his memory by lying to yourself about who he was.”

Shifting slightly, he let his forehead come to rest against hers. “That’s part of the problem. I don’t know him, Jane, I never knew him. I know a little _about_ him, but I don’t _know_ him. I need you to tell me about him, to teach me about him.”

One of her hands slid into the hair that lay against the back of his neck. “I’ll tell you everything I can,” she said softly.

“First, tell me why you came here. Tell me why you’ve done any of this. Explain to me why you need to leave and possibly get yourself killed? I need to understand that.”

“What do you mean ‘why I’ve done any of this’?” she asked warily.

Pulling back so he could look into her eyes, he propped his head up on his arm. “The first day I met you, you said you worked against The Company now. That meant to me, that like my dad, you were bringing down the bad guys, not that you were just there on an assignment.” When she didn’t reply, he demanded, “Am I wrong?”

“No,” she said, her voice subdued.

“You took LJ, put him in school and waited until it was safe to move him around, because it was your job?”

“No.”

“You came here, when you coulda just shipped him here without you, because it was your job?” She pressed a fist against his shoulder, trying to push away from him, but he tightened the arm he already had around her waist. “Tell me,” he said, and even he could hear the softness in his tone, pleading instead of demanding.

It worked like a tonic on her, because she stopped struggling against his hold and took a deep breath. She moved her eyes to the ceiling, though, looking away from him as she started to speak. “I did all of that because I loved your father. I hate to even say this out loud, because I can just hear your snide remarks, but Aldo was like a father to me. He was the only person in the world who knew me, who cared about me, who understood when I took the job I thought I would be helping the world, not creating havoc. He was the only one who knew why I had to be a part of taking them down. I had to repair some of the damage I’d unwittingly done by working for them in the first place. And so when he died, I came here, to be with you, because I thought it might give me something of him. I needed closure.” Her eyes fell shut and she lifted a hand to press over them, blotting out new tears. “I just needed to know that you were all right, all of you, and that when I left you’d be whole and secure. I needed to do what he would have done if he were still here.”

Lincoln pulled her closer, unable to stop himself from cuddling her. She was somewhat stiff in his arms, but he continued to brush her skin with his fingertips and his lips. She lowered her hand and opened her eyes, looking at him uneasily. “I want to know about him, about Aldo, I just didn’t want to press you, not while you were still grieving,” he explained. “I know I’ve handled it completely wrong, and now you’re leaving, and I don’t want you too, for so many reasons, and so I’m trying to explain myself, and I’m butchering it for sure, but damn it, I’m trying.”

“I think we burned off enough aggression to be able to do this somewhat civilly now,” Jane said with a small smile. She turned on to her side so that they were lying belly to belly on the couch.

“So when you leave here, you think we’ll be whole and secure?” he asked.

She was honest enough to offer him a shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know if we can live in this world and have that. LJ says to have a little faith, but that’s easier said than done.”

“Not really. If the kid who saw his own mother get killed, and almost lost his dad and his uncle, and now the only woman left who gives a shit about him is taking off, can say that, I think the rest of us ought to hunker down and find some fucking faith.”

He felt her stomach and chest press against his as she took a big breath. “If I stay here, that’s my faith, Lincoln. If I stay here with you guys, not knowing what will happen, that’s my step out into the darkness.”

“You don’t know what will happen out there, either, Jane. And here, you’re safe from bullets and bad guys. Here you get to be LJ’s hero without anyone else dying.”

“Here, I could get my heart broken,” she whispered, looking at his mouth, as though afraid to look into his eyes.

He dipped his head and caught her lips with his. Kissing her softly, he ran his tongue around the inner edges of her lips, swiped the ridges of her teeth and flicked it over the tip of her own tongue. She responded, her head falling back slightly, her lips opening wider to allow him access. Against her mouth he said, “I’ve learned it can all be taken away. In a heartbeat, it can all be gone. You can leave tomorrow, Jane, and it’s over for me, or you can stay and try to make it work and something else can happen to end it all. We can’t know. We can never know. That’s why it’s called faith.”

Her hands moved up, surrounding his face, caressing his earlobes lightly. “If you drink a green tea, I’ll stay,” she said, squeezing his cheeks in her hands.

He scoffed and asked, “Is this about the Viagra thing? As you can see, I don’t need any help.”

Laughing out loud, Jane shook her head. “That’s the one thing LJ lied about it. It doesn’t work for that. Everything else he told you about it is true, but it’s not ‘More effective than Viagra for Erectile Dysfunction!’”

“I’m gonna wring his scrawny neck,” Lincoln muttered.

“Guess he thought you might care about that more than the heart/stroke/cholesterol angle.”

“Trust me, as long as you’re around, I won’t need any other stimulants.”

 

 

LJ, Michael and Sara got back from ‘church’ late that afternoon—which really had ended up being breakfast downtown and a stroll through some of the shops, and okay, church of a sort, because LJ had been praying silently all day that when they got back to the house things between his dad and Jane would be better. They walked through the house, but it was still and silent, and LJ had a sudden, panicky thought that perhaps they had killed each other, when he heard laughter through the screen door that led to the backyard.

Rushing through the door, he saw them, lying on floaters in the pool, just talking. There was nothing particularly special about the scene except that Jane had an arm extended towards Lincoln, as though she were telling him off for something, and he had his hand on her leg, because their heads were at opposite ends from each other. Then Lincoln’s hands moved from her leg to the side of the floater, pulling her quickly towards him so their heads were closer together and then he reached over and kissed her, right on the mouth. It was fast and hard and then with a squeal, Jane’s arms went up as he dumped her off the floater.

She emerged a moment later, coming up under the floater Lincoln laid on, sending him flying.

LJ looked at his uncle and Sara and asked stupidly, “It worked?”

“It worked,” Michael said in response.

Sara just smiled.

LJ turned to go back in the house and get his own swimming shorts on when he noticed an empty green tea bottle sitting on the concrete at the bottom of the steps. It was the one he’d left next to his dad’s side of the bed that morning, because it still bore the ‘Drink me, and lower your risk of stroke!’ label.

“Dad? Dad!” he shouted, running towards the pool.

Lincoln’s head swiveled around, giving Jane the chance to jump on his back and try to shove him underwater. “Hey, you guys are back! What’s up?” Lincoln called, keeping himself above water somehow.

“Did you drink that green tea?” LJ asked.

“Yes, I did,” he replied, smiling in response to the grin overtaking LJ’s face.

“Did you like it?” LJ asked.

“It was all right,” he said, finally giving in and letting Jane push him below the surface of the water. A moment later, he came back up, only now he was at the end of the pool and Jane was following close behind. “What do you think about Jane staying here, you know, for-like-ever?”

“Sounds good to me,” LJ said, his eyes moving over to Jane as she slung her arms around Lincoln’s neck so she was looking over his shoulder at LJ too, grinning happily. “What do you think?” he asked, looking back at his father’s face.

“You’ll probably have to buy more of that tea, if she’s going to be around.”

The grin felt like it might crack his face, but LJ couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t get over how much happier they looked either, and he suspected he knew what that was about too, but he had the decency not to mention it. “Sounds like a plan,” he said, winking. “I told you green tea would change your life.”


End file.
